Reclaimed Wood Keychains

When we first opened up shop, we gathered supplies like you normally would to get your business going. We happened upon a pile of wood from a demolished barn in Skagit County and thought it would be something that we could at least test on. It was dirty but not warped. Once it was sanded down a bit, it's natural beauty revealed itself from underneath years of damage from the elements. We just had to give it a new life. 

We decided on something small for various reasons. While it was gorgeous underneath all the layers of damage, there were dings and chips in the boards. Which made it unusable for large projects. Simple keychains is what we settled on. 

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One instantly notable thing we saw was that cutting the blanks for our keychains was the beautiful charred look around the edges. It echoed an ancient Japanese wood burning/sealing technique called Shou Sugi Ban. Although, Shou Sugi Ban traditionally uses cedar wood in that technique and 99% of our reclaimed wood is oak. The extremely hot laser beam seals the edges much like how Shou Sugi Ban works. I used to be on my dad & brother's wood cutting crew when I was a young kid. I mostly knew what type of woods we were cutting and it was my job to just stack it nicely in the back of our work truck. I had to do quite a bit of research on wood types when we started in 2014. To educate myself on how certain woods cut and their appearance. It was fun to compare that traditional Japanese technique to our modern work when we analyzed our product.

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One other thing to note about our keychains, due to the laser cutting and the sanding that we do, they have a beautiful aroma. We've had many customers and looky-loos pick them up and smell them. Everyone always asks if that's weird. It's totally not! They smell so good. I encourage everyone to smell them as well as some of our other products too. 

We've had a quite a few of our retailers recently pick up our keychains. I mention to each buyer that they are made of reclaimed wood and they are always excited to learn that! We've sourced  all of the wood from Skagit, Snohomish, King, Whatcom and Island Counties right here in Washington. Our garage and storage shed is a mess because of it, but we just can't pass it up! I really wanted to share that bit of information about our keychains since there's so much positivity about using reclaimed wood. :) 

Lasers and love - Thea

Game On

Well, I wrote out a great blog post and Comcast crapped out on me and didn't save that amazing post. Ahh, I guess it wasn't meant to be. Alas, I wanted to share what we've been up to lately. While I do wish it was gaming. (I'm personally eagerly awaiting the Final Fantasy 7 remake!!!) But we've been producing new works as well as custom items. Like these large laser cut and engraved chess and game piece wall decor:

Custom Phoenix Shield

Black and White Knights. 

They turned out pretty great. They were hand painted and laser cut and engraved. A fairly simple design but really awesome. 

Speaking of games...have I mentioned that we have a new Critical Hit design? In addition to our original Script style we now offer our Modern Block style for our Critical Hit signs. Available in ten colors! I'm a little sweet on the red:

Well back to work! We picked up a handful of beautiful reclaimed maple wood sheets that are calling to be laser cut and engraved into something awesome. 

Lasers and love (8 bit heart love), Thea 

Pacific Northwest Lifer - Keychains Update

When we opened our business doors about a year ago this month, we had a plethora of ideas that we wanted to bring to fruition. Aside from my ninjas, my Pacific Northwest Lifer logo was first on my list. I wanted to put Pacific Northwest Lifer onto everything. While the rest of our country is pretty great and beautiful too, I was raised at sea level among towering evergreen trees with rugged mountain ranges in the distance. This is home for me.  We happened upon some reclaimed wood and created our original designed PNWLifer keychains. 

Since it's been a year, we decided to update the look of our very popular PNWLifer keychains and added two more designs!

All of the new and improved designs are available in our shop. We hope you like the new look and the new added designs. There are more in development too! 

Thanks so much for all the PNW love we've received this past year!

Lasers and love - Thea

Chihuly Garden and Glass

Can I be honest? I almost crapped my pants when Chilhuly Garden and Glass placed an order with us. We've been in business under a year still and we're still doing research for the best suppliers. We did have some trials and errors with this order. Mainly finding quality hardware in large quantities and a dependable supplier. 

For this order, we used reclaimed wood that we found at Skagit Building Salvage in my "second" hometown of Mount Vernon, WA. Beautiful oak wood that laser engraves like butter as you can see in great detail of Dale Chihuly's work. His artwork that we received (from his excellent staff) was meant to be laser engraved. These turned out so great. The detail is amazing.

This was our first large batch order. Each keychain received hands on attention. Painting, cleaning and hardware attachment. 

As any business starting out we definitely learned a few lessons and know how we can handle orders like this more efficiently and have since applied those to subsequent and current orders. Custom colors were an initial concern, but through this order we discovered we are capable of offering limitless color options. We also learned that John is the master of creating a well made jig for large batch lasering. 

It's an honor to contribute products to an amazing local establishment. It also means a lot that they sourced local manufacturers. Keeping it really Northwest. 

Look for these at the Chilhuly Garden and Glass gift shop!

Lasers and Love - Thea